AVID Learners

English department chairwoman Mary Catherine Swanson was
determined that the school not automatically steer the new students
onto a remedial track.

Yet it wasn't just the race and class of the new students that had
these Clairemont teachers feeling unsettled. It was also the
realization that the school was about to go down the tubes
academically. After all, most were veteran teachers who had for years
taught college-prep courses. Many of their new students came from the
nearby Mexican border town of Tijuana and hardly spoke English.
Something would have to give, and they feared it would be the
curriculum. These new students were destined for the dark outposts of
remedial education, which until that point had barely existed at the
school. The teachers worried that they would have to follow, abandoning
calculus for general math, Shakespeare for simple magazine articles.
Many had helped found the school 20 years before and were bitter. There
were rumors that the San Diego school district wanted Clairemont to
fail so it could sell off the choice property to developers.

But one Clairemont teacher, English department chairwoman Mary
Catherine Swanson, had something different in mind. She was determined
that the school not automatically steer the new students onto a
remedial track. Swanson, who was 35 years old at the time, had once
taught remedial reading herself, and she knew that once students were
placed in such classes they almost never came back. It was like the
inscription above the gate of Dante's inferno: "All hope abandon, ye
who enter here." So Swanson decided to do something that would give
these students the opportunity to shoot for college.

To most of her colleagues, this seemed a hopeless task. But Swanson
felt no trepidation. She talked about that time when I met with her
this fall at the San Diego County office of education, where she now
directs AVID's growing national operations. "One of the hallmarks of
why I was a good teacher was that I always collaborated with others and
never, never taught in isolation," Swanson told me. "We had two years
to think about desegregation before it finally arrived in 1980, and I
constantly talked with others—those who weren't to-tally lost to
skepticism—about how we might approach it."

The approach she cooked up became AVID. Its simple goal was to
prepare underachieving disadvantaged students—those who typically
ended up in remedial classes—for entry into four-year colleges.
This was a lofty goal, and Swanson knew that simply placing these
students in college-prep classes and telling them to go for it was not
the answer. "You can't magically just give underrepresented kids this
rigorous curriculum and expect them to be successful," she said. "The
majority will fail. And we all know that schools can't accommodate
large numbers of failures. They keep course titles that suggest the
courses are rigorous, but everyone knows that Advanced English II is
really remedial."

AVID students enroll in the same academic courses that traditional
college-bound students take.

Yet it wasn't just the race and class of the new students that had
these Clairemont teachers feeling unsettled. It was also the
realization that the school was about to go down the tubes
academically. After all, most were veteran teachers who had for years
taught college-prep courses. Many of their new students came from the
nearby Mexican border town of Tijuana and hardly spoke English.
Something would have to give, and they feared it would be the
curriculum. These new students were destined for the dark outposts of
remedial education, which until that point had barely existed at the
school. The teachers worried that they would have to follow, abandoning
calculus for general math, Shakespeare for simple magazine articles.
Many had helped found the school 20 years before and were bitter. There
were rumors that the San Diego school district wanted Clairemont to
fail so it could sell off the choice property to developers.

But one Clairemont teacher, English department chairwoman Mary
Catherine Swanson, had something different in mind. She was determined
that the school not automatically steer the new students onto a
remedial track. Swanson, who was 35 years old at the time, had once
taught remedial reading herself, and she knew that once students were
placed in such classes they almost never came back. It was like the
inscription above the gate of Dante's inferno: "All hope abandon, ye
who enter here." So Swanson decided to do something that would give
these students the opportunity to shoot for college.

To most of her colleagues, this seemed a hopeless task. But Swanson
felt no trepidation. She talked about that time when I met with her
this fall at the San Diego County office of education, where she now
directs AVID's growing national operations. "One of the hallmarks of
why I was a good teacher was that I always collaborated with others and
never, never taught in isolation," Swanson told me. "We had two years
to think about desegregation before it finally arrived in 1980, and I
constantly talked with others—those who weren't to-tally lost to
skepticism—about how we might approach it."

The approach she cooked up became AVID. Its simple goal was to
prepare underachieving disadvantaged students—those who typically
ended up in remedial classes—for entry into four-year colleges.
This was a lofty goal, and Swanson knew that simply placing these
students in college-prep classes and telling them to go for it was not
the answer. "You can't magically just give underrepresented kids this
rigorous curriculum and expect them to be successful," she said. "The
majority will fail. And we all know that schools can't accommodate
large numbers of failures. They keep course titles that suggest the
courses are rigorous, but everyone knows that Advanced English II is
really remedial."

AVID students enroll in the same academic courses that traditional
college-bound students take.

Swanson's solution was to create a supplementary course that students
could take to learn the range of skills they would need to succeed in
high school and beyond. Students who chose to participate in the new
program—it was then and still is voluntary—took the
school's standard curriculum, plus this daily, hourlong class with
Swanson. The basic structure remains in place today. AVID students
enroll in the same academic courses that traditional college-bound
students take. In those classes, they receive no special instruction or
consideration. Though the vast majority of teachers in AVID schools are
receptive to the program, most have no direct connection to it. The
extra academic and social support the students receive comes via the
AVID classes, which are taught by regular subject-area teachers who
have received special training.

Swanson's first AVID class was filled with students with no idea of
what serious study entailed. Most, she discovered, were ambitious but
naive: They wanted to attend college but did not have a clue about what
it would take to get there. Their study habits were weak or
nonexistent. They tended to study alone, minimizing the opportunity to
learn from others. And an astounding number took no notes at all. Over
the years, they had become passive observers.

Swanson decided to first focus on note-taking. This was the only way
she could find out what the students were picking up in their other
classes. She taught them how to take detailed notes, and, when she
discovered that they often didn't understand what they were writing
down, she had them jot questions in the margins. She also insisted that
the notes be more than a copy of what was on the blackboard. If they
couldn't put the material into their own words, then they didn't really
understand it.

The simple act of taking notes had an immediate and somewhat
surprising impact, and it quickly became a cornerstone of the AVID
program. Most practically, it forced students to be attentive and gave
them a way to share ideas and information. More subtle were the
psychological changes dedicated note-taking produced: The youngsters
slowly began to see themselves as students in the full sense of the
word. And teachers who had been dubious about the kids' abilities were
amazed to see them doing the very things their top students were doing.
Although they were hardly aware of it, the AVID students were becoming
acculturated in the ways of the college-bound.

"It helped that all of us AVID students were struggling with the
same things. I was an outsider, but the AVID classroom was the
one place I felt I belonged."

Maximo Escobedo, Clairemont student

But there was only so much Swanson could do on her own: She simply
didn't know enough math or science to be much help in those subjects.
So she asked former Clairemont students—all of them knowledgeable
and in college—to come back and tutor the AVID youngsters. The
tutors were ostensibly in the AVID classroom to assist with schoolwork,
but their presence had other important benefits. Because the tutors
were close in age to their charges, the students felt comfortable
talking to them about their problems.

"The kids were most frustrated when they couldn't grapple long
enough with information to really understand it," said Swanson, whose
nervous energy manifests itself in clipped gestures. "You know what
happens with teachers. They ask a question to the full class and then,
when no one responds, answer the question themselves and move on. But
you can't just move on, or you'll lose kids."

One Clairemont student who looked as if he might get lost for good
was Maximo Escobedo, one of six children in a family of Mexican
immigrants. Although he understood only a few words of English and felt
overwhelmed by American culture, the young Escobedo knew enough about
what was going on to see that the school wasn't working to his
advantage.

"After the first two weeks, I realized I wasn't being placed in
classes that would get me on to college," said Escobedo, now a graphic
artist at a software company. "They were putting me, like the Mexican
friends I played soccer with, into two or three shop classes a year. My
first classes were Spanish, English as a Second Language, shop, PE,
math—a very iffy set."

The next year, due in part to a counselor who recognized his
potential, Escobedo entered AVID. "In AVID, I was not only expected to
get high grades but also to go to college," he said. "After my second
year at Clairemont, my schedule was completely changed—from ESL
to English literature. By my senior year, I was in honors English. It
was rough, but I knew that the tutor could always help me get through.
And it helped that all of us AVID students were struggling with the
same things. I was an outsider, but the AVID classroom was the one
place I felt I belonged."

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